DC Metro Area Personal Injury Law Blog

Throughout the campus of the Providence Hospital in Northeast Washington, lighting up is now off-limits -- banished from porticoes, walkways, even the parking areas and loading dock.

As reported in the Washington Post, the prohibition makes Providence the first health-care facility in the District to declare its property puff-and-snuff free and one of the few in the region, joining the likes of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Civista Medical Center in La Plata and Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksburg.  The biggest notices, bright blue and unavoidable, are posted at all the driveway entrances to Providence Hospital. Outside its doors are more signs with the telltale slash mark. And on a lawn gazebo, which until Jan. 1 was one of the last remaining refuges, is this polite but firm directive:

"Providence Is Now Tobacco Free. No Smoking, Please. Thanks."